


Striations

by citrusella



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: (question mark?), (the pain is probably less bad than the story implies but Steven just isn't used to it), Bruises, Concussions, Gen, Medical Examination, Pain, Post-Episode: s06e19 I Am My Monster, Scars, Steven is Tired and in need of a therapist and mild basic medical care, Vague Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:55:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23727937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusella/pseuds/citrusella
Summary: At Connie's behest, Dr. Maheswaran makes a house call to Steven's place after his un-monstering.It's different than his last appointment, but its core is the same.
Relationships: Priyanka Maheswaran & Steven Universe
Comments: 7
Kudos: 186
Collections: lofi fanfics to practice social distancing to





	Striations

Steven had cracked open his eye for less than a second before the late afternoon sun had him promptly squeezing it shut once more.

Unfortunately, that was too late, the light a rude awakening that thrust him out of his insensate state, leaving him unable to focus on much else than hugging at a pillow while his body screamed in protest.

Someone said something behind him. He didn't— _couldn't_ —care about what they were saying.

He didn't know it, but it had been a day… since… since _that_.

If only he could have kept sleeping another 24 hours.

* * *

When he next hears a voice in his room, he at least makes an effort to respond.

He turns from his side to his back—wrong choice—a grimace slashing its way across his face as tons of tiny daggers pierce his joints and muscles.

A groan escapes his lips—wrong choice—the aches in his head and throat only exacerbated by the action.

"Good evening to you, too, Steven."

He lets out a pained hiss and takes a moment to take in the environment. He's in his room (cleaned up, since before), covered with the blue blanket (still?), wearing underwear (thankfully).

And Dr. Maheswaran is the only one there, right by the stairs. "Doct—" He cuts himself off as he notices the slight rasp settled on his voice and clears his throat. Nngh. It doesn't help. He opts to just stew in the pain rather than make a second attempt.

"Can't say I normally make house calls, but Connie was adamant that you be checked out as soon as you were awake. Are you okay with that?"

—Hmm. The someone he heard before. It must have been Connie. The thought almost takes him away from Dr. Maheswaran's question, but he responds with a nod—and another grimace.

"Alright. I'll take it slow, and I'll let you know if there's anything I need you to do. Any chief complaints?" She takes his temperature. Hm, 99.3. She wonders if maybe his basal temperature is just higher than the average person's. She can't exactly test that hypothesis without more data.

"…Hurts," he mumbles. He looks like he's about to cry.

Her face wears a nonplussed expression. "With that face? I'm not surprised. Anywhere in particular?"

"Everywhere," he grumbles.

She frowns, that kind of mom frown that comes with letting down a kid. "Are you comfortable sharing what happened?"

Steven sighs and wonders why on earth he isn't _actually_ crying right now, looking past the doctor to his doorway as she follows his gaze.

"I know everyone else probably knows what's going on, but I can't imagine this feels very private," she remarks. He doesn't feel the torture of movement, but he presumes he does something passing for a head shake, judging by her reaction to what comes next.

"I'm going to need you to sit up for me, okay? I can help, if you need it."

"…Yeah," he says tersely, taking a firm inhale. He _knows_ this is going to hurt, it's going to hurt—oh _gosh_ it's going to—

" _Ah!_ " The scream is sudden, reflexive, as he pushes up with the aid of Dr. Maheswaran's hand against his shoulder.

A shout punches up through the stairwell. "Steven?! Are you okay!?" Pearl. It's Pearl. _Of course_ it's Pearl.

His voice comes out warbly, as if it's recoiling just as much as his body from the assault on his nerves. "I'm f—" His breath hitches and for once it's not pain as he cuts himself off, the phrase, _that_ phrase, forever something that will taste wrong in his mouth.

He's glad Connie's mom jumps in to field the question. "He's in good hands, Pearl. And he needs the space for me to check him out without interruptions, please." It sounds like Pearl wants to protest, but he can hear Garnet leading her away from the staircase, and he lets himself do something passing for relaxing for just a moment.

"…Thanks. I've…" he clears his throat and Dr. Maheswaran hands him a bottle of water from his bedside table (how long was that there?)—it doesn't make it all better but is still helpful enough, "I've never hurt like this before… this… this long, I mean." He thinks that he _must_ have hurt this _bad_ … all the bones he's broken would certainly suggest so, but considering the typical speed of his healing… maybe it's just worse when it doesn't let up? Gah. 

A modicum of guilt invites itself onto his face, an expression the doctor catches onto.

"From your history, I'd believe that statement. I take it something big happened? Connie said something to that effect, but she wouldn't elaborate." When Steven withdraws a second time at her question, she stops pressing and continues with her makeshift exam. Her cell phone's flashlight shone into his throat (slight redness, nothing too serious). Feeling and pressing at various particularly painful parts of his body (no special or terribly severe pain, which she thinks, in addition to his biology, is a strong point in favor of no broken bones).

She listens to his heart, his lungs, with the spare stethoscope she brought, moves it around to the posterior side of his torso to listen again, and—

Before she's even looked, her hand brushes a texture she can instinctively identify as scar tissue. She turns her gaze to find a wide, pale pink scar, clearly fresh yet already partially healed, uneven hills and valleys zigzagging their way around the perimeter of his back.

She stops. Which, given what she's seen in her stints in the emergency department, is no small feat.

Her face softens. She looks at Steven like a mom, not like a doctor.

"Steven. I need to know what happened."

He sniffs, and he doesn't answer.

She continues delicately. "You've got extensive scarring on your back, and it wasn't there last time I examined you." His eyes widen, and he starts to try to crane his neck back until he remembers moving hurts. "I'm not pushing, but I _need_ to know." She looks at him gently.

"It—it's not from—from… corruption?" Truthfully, he doesn't even know if what happened could be _called_ corruption, because on some level he _doesn't know_ what happened, but… the question floats there, without his being able to see what the doctor's seeing.

"Is that a gem thing?" Her tone is unassuming. He nods. And winces.

"In my professional opinion, Steven, this looks completely human. Like you fell on something jagged. Or maybe like some of the shrapnel scars I saw in my textbooks in medical school." The hanging question, the same one as before, _what happened_ , is still in the air.

The jig is up. Everyone else knows, so what's one more person?

"I—I…" He feels the tears finally start pricking at the corners of his eyes as he takes a shuddering breath in. "I… turned into a monster. A… really big one. I… I think it started in my back? Things are kinda fuzzy. Sorry." The wheels turn in his head and he finds himself opening his mouth again just moments later. "But… wouldn't my gem heal it?"

Dr. Maheswaran puts her hand to her chin. "Well… that's something I'm worried about, but it's not _impossible_ for you to scar even so, if the striations on that x-ray I took of you last week are anything to go off—that's just fast normal healing, not going right back to its original form. Could be the same thing here, but I'd have to examine you further to be sure."

He shrinks. "The way you did at the hospital?"

She snorts. "Not quite so intense as that, no. I mean, if I'm being honest, I'd recommend a hospital trip just to rule out internal injuries, even if they're unlikely given your… er… makeup…" he invests his gaze in his bedspread, "just due to the pain you're expressing and the amount of real estate that scar covers. But— _for now_ —I'll give you and your dad the choice to stay home unless I come across something I cannot ethically advise you to deal with here. Are you willing to let me continue?"

He bites his lip, wrapping his arms around himself with a wince. "…Yeah."

As she pokes and prods him some more, she tries to make talk—small talk, brief questions about her observations, whatever she can to try to further gauge his willingness to respond.

"So… you've been clearing your throat a lot—any thoughts about what could be causing that?"

"Um." His pause is altogether too long but unsurprising considering what she now knows. She finishes taking a look at his leg and foot and, apparently satisfied with her check of his extremities, moves to his face and head, looking into an ear. "Uh… I—" He sighs. "Mmm… Monsters, uh, roar." He stops. He doesn't elaborate.

He doesn't really need to. "Probably just a mild vocal strain, then. Nothing to be too worried about."

She's trying to ease the atmosphere.

It's not working.

For either of them.

Rather than ask him to turn so she can get to the other side of his head, she walks around his bed and sits between him and the bright sun.

Somehow, this is helpful to Steven, allowing him to relax as her shadow shields his eyes from the light.

She's about to look into his right ear when she catches a blotch of very light purple (though if she didn't know better, she would have sworn it was fluorescent pink) _just_ peeking out from his hairline. She gently combs at his hair with her fingers to get a look at his scalp, brow furrowed.

She leans to look him in the face, one hand still parting his curls. "…Steven? Do you know how long this bruise has been here?"

Steven, to his credit, looks thoroughly confused, as if he's not parsed the meaning of her question until several moments later. "I haven't had a bruise in over a year," he says, a tad distant as he grabs at threads of thought, hoping one might explain where it's come from.

Dr. Maheswaran _hmms_ to herself. "I'll try to get a better look at it; hold on. Let me know if anything I'm doing hurts, okay?"

He winces as she lightly presses at different areas of the spot, parting more of his hair to see how far it reaches.

She said to tell her if it hurt, but, like… if the rest of him is an 8—no, 6— _no, 4_ , who ever even hurts more than _a 4_ … then is a 5 really worth bringing up?

She touches something closer to his crown, and he can't contain the grimace; he grunts as a sharp sensation somewhere between pins and needles and a hard pinch radiates from his head to his toes.

What _the heck?_

The doctor mutters something about a strange knot just at the edge of the bruise seeming to be more painful than anything else as she jots something down. She must have had the yellow legal pad—probably procured from Pearl—the whole time, but he's only noticed it now, maybe because focusing on it takes his mind off the still-subsiding feeling coursing through his body.

She sighs and sits the pad down, giving Steven a glimpse of big words describing his back and head that he's too tired to properly understand. "It's pretty big, Steven, more or less the entire side of your head. Do you remember hitting your head on anything?"

He thinks long and hard about the past week, not because so much stuff has happened but more because the chaos, the feelings, the _meltdown_ … he's having a hard time sorting out what happened when, in what order, without thinking long enough to feel self-conscious about it.

The guilt comes quick as soon as part of his mind (the rest still searching his memory) lands on a possible answer. "I… I-I… I crashed—I crashed the van. I know I was unconscious—but… but—wait, no, I don't think I had any bruise or anything after that—I felt fine once I woke up—I—" he pauses, face filling with fright, as another possibility rudely introduces itself, something from the fuzz of his transformation image-enhanced by his brain like it's a technical analyst on a crime procedural, "the statue," he breathes out, barely even a whisper.

"Statue? What statue?"

"I… I hit my head against it. I think. While I was… I…" He stops trying to explain, taking a few quick shallow breaths just a hair short of hyperventilating. It passes almost as soon as it comes on, but Connie's mom still positions herself to offer what assistance she can, if it's needed.

Being thrust back there is all he needs to start spiraling again.

"I… I mess everything up—I ruined the house, and the temple, and we didn't even get a GP like you said to—"

"Steven, it's barely been a week, I wouldn't have expected you to have gotten to one yet. Even if you'd found one, you probably wouldn't have been able to see them yet."

"—Maybe I should have seen a brain doctor, and none of this would have happened, I…"

" _Steven_. I think it's… good that you want to take care of yourself, and I don't disagree—you… probably need therapy, if you want me to be honest. However, I think it's smarter to focus on the immediate issues—the pain, bruises, scarring, those things—for now. We can focus on everything else once we've settled the direct medical issues."

Steven sighs and, though it hurts, wraps his arms around his midsection. "Right. You're right. I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to apologize over, Steven."

He lets out a shuddering breath, but he otherwise doesn't acknowledge that she's said anything at all.

He should be apologizing again, for that.

He doesn't see it, but Dr. Maheswaran frowns beside him. She lets the silence stagnate before she gathers herself and focuses on the matter at hand again.

"Okay… let's just get back to…" she sighs, "I'll just cut to the chase: do you have a headache?"

He's slow to respond. "No?" He cocks his head upward to look her in the face, his eyes snapping tightly shut as he catches a glimpse of the sunlight behind her.

"Steven, I know you just don't want anyone, me included, to be worried, but I'm asking because I'm already worried, and you're much worse at lying than my daughter."

He huffs. "Fine. Yes. But… but—it's not that bad, though! I swear!" He _thinks_ it's not that bad, anyway. He's not sure if he can really tell, what with his usual (read: virtually nonexistent, outside of pinpoints) experience with pain, or the way his whole body is feeling now.

He lifts the water bottle out of his lap and takes a long sip, trying to distract himself from the ache that's definitely probably not _that_ bad but just _might_ be a little worse than he's trying to let on to his friend's mom. Dr. Maheswaran, for her part, takes the time to turn over some thoughts in her head.

"So… do gems have any equivalent to a doctor?"

His answer sounds… irritated, as if he has been reminded of just another weight on the Universe's shoulders. "I'm… or mom was… my tears and spit can heal stuff." The doctor, being a doctor, looks thoroughly grossed out, but for her part, she tries to keep it to herself. "Pearl's probably good at the knowledge part if that's what you're, um, going for, but…"

"You don't want her to butt in on this whole thing," she says knowingly.

He gives his head a minute shake, clenching his teeth and wondering if it's normal to be getting used to pain.

"Then I guess it's your help I need. Presuming you know the answer. Is there any way your gem can… how best to describe this? Stop working? Or not work as well?" She tries to focus on being all doctor and not on the fact her protective mother instincts are still fighting to display themselves.

"I…" He takes a deep breath, if only to buy himself more time to figure out how to lay it out on the table for her; he's attempting to be all business in turn, if having a slight whimper in his voice could be described as "business". "I mean… I think so? It… when I was trying to master my powers, when I was growing up… I… sometimes I did too much and it… got harder to use it, but never, like, impossible. Sometimes it did weird stuff if I overworked it, too, like… I turned into… into a baby on my 14th birthday because I was shapeshifting so long, but… it's never… it always… it _sort of_ works as long as it's not re… re-rejuvenated or…"

Long black nails.

"—or…"

Big, crushing grip.

"—or—"

Blinding white smile, eyes, skin, _face!_

Breathing. Fast breathing. Way, way, _way_ fast breathing. In and out, but it feels like none of the air is actually reaching his lungs, his blood, his _brain_.

Pain, pain, pain, so much pain, it's everywhere, he's gone, half of him is gone, oh geez, he's alone but it's _even worse_ because he's not even alone _together_ and Connie is there and she shouldn't have to see this, go through this, he's gonna die, he needs it, it's right there, _he's_ right there, _right there_ , but he _can't reach it_ —

"Steven!"

He's hyperventilating.

"It's okay. It's all right."

She—Dr. Maheswaran—she's rubbing his arm. She looks scared, or… maybe worried?

_It's_ not _okay,_ not _alright. You're ruining everything._

He's… he's pink. His very skin feels on edge, like he's about to be as big as his room. Maybe bigger than his room? But he's not growing or swelling or anything else, he's just… pink.

"I don't know what set this off, but it's going to—" more fully settling back into the present, he looks at her with a stare so intense she backs off the probably-empty-to-him reassurances, "Maybe… I should just tell you what I think, as a doctor."

The pink, along with the small energy boost it seemed to bring, flickers away like a house losing power in a rainstorm, leaving a dark, tired boy behind. He's trying to keep his breathing steady, but he's crying, _profusely_ so, making no attempt to hide any of it.

She continues.

"I… Well, first off. I don't think you have any emergent physical or psychiatric crises that would _force_ a hospital stay, but…" she closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose, "I think you're _probably_ fine and it's just that due to the speed and effectiveness of your healing in the past, you don't have a high tolerance for long, drawn-out pain, mild, severe, or anything in between."

"But the head bruising _does_ make me uncomfortable. Especially so since you described two different potentially concussive events less than a week apart. Not exactly thrilled about the scarring, either. It's more likely than not that you'll be fine, especially if your gem starts picking up the slack, but in my professional opinion… I think it'd be better for you to recuperate in a medical setting. Just long enough for some observation. Maybe some testing, just to double check nothing's seriously wrong."

"…And if I didn't want to do that?" He's managed to stabilize his breathing and voice, but only barely.

"I… don't really want to give you the option—or, rather, your dad, really, since I'd have to run it by him—but I'd recommend complete bed rest at least until the headache and soreness lessen. Then some follow-up with me or a regular doctor if you can get in with one, and we'd go from there."

"So… if I go to the hospital… you won't need to follow up?" He's pleading, desperate.

"You're going to need the follow-up either way, Steven. If that scar tissue sticks around, it'd be smart to have you see someone, a physical therapist or a dermatologist or something, and get you on some sort of regimen of exercises or treatments; we don't want it to get stiff and impede your movement, especially since it takes up so much of your back. Moreover… I know I said this before, but you really should see a therapist. A psychological one, I mean.

Steven frowns. "I don't want people to have to worry about me."

"No offense, Steven, but they're already worried about you. You slept for over 24 hours. And prior to that, I'd imagine seeing a teenage boy turn into a giant monster would do that to people."

He snorts. It's the first genuine, healthy laugh out of him in weeks, even if it's short-lived.

"All getting help will do is get you to a better place, so maybe they don't have to worry as much. They care about you, Steven. They want what's best for you." She lets the physician's demeanor fall, leaving the friend's-mom one behind. "…Everyone does—that's your family, friends, Connie… me and Doug." She lets her statement sit on the room as she puts her stethoscope, thermometer, and phone away. "Now… do you want me to bring your dad up here so we can both talk about this with him, or do you want me to talk to him on my own?"

He offers a resigned exhale. "Let's do it together."

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I've been spitting out a lot of fic lately... now I wonder if I should take a break for a few days or keep the ball rolling. XD


End file.
